BRIAN FLANNERY, whose net worth is estimated to be $600 million, was dismissive of the amazing windfall he was about to receive when - after only eight weeks - his $640,000 investment in the mining company at the centre of a corruption scandal was about to skyrocket to $50 million.

This prompted a terse response from counsel assisting the inquiry, Geoffrey Watson, SC. ''You chaps are very good at telling us about how much money you've got … here everybody is equal, unless you haven't noticed.''

The Independent Commission Against Corruption heard that at the end of September 2010, Mr Flannery paid $640,000 for shares in Cascade Coal, the company at the centre of allegations that it was corruptly awarded a coal exploration licence in 2009 by the then NSW mining minister, Ian Macdonald.

In November 2010, White Energy, the company of which Mr Flannery is the chairman, offered to buy Cascade for $500 million. This would have made Mr Flannery's investment in Cascade worth $50 million.

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The commission is inquiring into whether the family of the controversial former Labor MP Eddie Obeid received inside information from Mr Macdonald, which allowed the Obeids and their associates to buy key farms in the Mount Penny area before Mr Macdonald announced that the area would be part of a coal tender.

The Obeids also managed to negotiate a 25 per cent stake in the winning bidder for the Mount Penny licence, Cascade Coal.

Mr Flannery's business partner and a fellow White Energy director and investor in Cascade, Travers Duncan, told the commission on Monday that he was furious when he discovered in early 2010 that the Obeids were the secret owners of 25 per cent of Cascade and that he insisted on their removal.

Mr Duncan said that he later told Mr Obeid's son Moses that they had to leave Cascade because of their ''bad reputation''.

''Why do you want us out? … There's nothing wrong with us. We've been investigated everywhere: they've looked down our throat, up our arse and they haven't found anything.

''We're just good businessmen,'' Mr Obeid reportedly told Mr Duncan.

ICAC has heard that the Obeids were offered $60 million to ''sanitise'' Cascade of their presence in readiness for its sale to White Energy. To date Cascade has paid the family $28 million.

However, the Australian Stock Exchange sent queries to White Energy about Cascade's mysterious $28 million payment, as well as the amazing $500 million valuation of Cascade when its only asset was the $1 million it had paid the NSW government for its coal exploration licence the previous year.

Mr Flannery told the commission he had no idea that the $28 million payment was going to the Obeids.

Instead, he thought it was possibly a corrupt payment by his fellow Cascade investors to make sure that a rival company dropped out of the tender for the Mount Penny coal licence.

The possibility of this illegality had so alarmed him he had decided that White Energy had to pull out of the deal to buy Cascade, he told ICAC.

None of these concerns were mentioned by Mr Flannery when he notified the stock exchange in April 2011. Instead, he was accused, in the ICAC hearing, of using ''weasel words'' when he told the ASX that environmental concerns had led to the collapse of the sale of Cascade.

When asked why he had done nothing to alert any regulatory bodies of his suspicions about the ''subversion of a government tender'', Mr Flannery replied: ''It wasn't necessary.''

The next witness before the commission is the former founder of RAMS Homes Loans, John Kinghorn.